A first glance it looks like it would perform well. However, any game that requires higher RAM and processing power leaves the Predator 8 struggling to keep up.

7.3

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Doesn't live up to its hype

Quad front-facing speakers, sharp edges, great form factor. You’re excited. Then you play a game – and it all goes to hell.

Acer usually gets things done well in the gaming department. They’ve been active in it for a long time, and just recently they appear to be putting more money into their gaming R&D departments and less so in their business orientated consumer products.

However, in the Predator 8 case – they went overboard with the design and forgot about the guts of the tablet. You know, the stuff that makes a gaming experience either awesome or dreaded. I am not really sure why all gaming hardware nowadays looks like some alien crapped it out. The “predator” or “transformer” or “alien” look to these units are horrid. Please stop with this design garbage and make a case look like it’s almost 2017 not 2001.

I tried the predator 8 on some titles from Gameloft: Dragon Hunter 5, and Asphalt 8: Airborne. That is after I spent about 30 minutes deleting all the bloatware on the thing, and there is a ton. There’s even notifications of “Acer Suggests: blah blah blah game” that keeps popping up.

Dragon Hunter 5, played pretty well. Movement was good and crisp, colors were sharp, every thing rendered well. The sound was great, as that’s something that I normally don’t experience when playing on a mobile phone. It is a shame that the placement of the speakers lend them to being covered up by your hands, almost defeating the purpose of having them there.

The screen was nice to have such a large format (1920 x 1200 TFT) and the viewing angles were reasonable as a few colleagues peered over my shoulders watching me play.

The unit is a little heavy and after awhile I was resting it either on a knee to play it. Or, I had to clunk it down on a desk or table. It also gets hot when playing for more than 20 minutes or so.

Asphalt 8 taxed the hell out of the Predator 8. Game play was slow and you could almost hear the tablet straining to keep up with the graphics. You’d think that a “gaming” tablet should be able to perform at its best settings otherwise why buy it right? The “high” settings for Asphalt 8, were unreliable so I tried medium. Better, but still herky jerky. OK – “low” setting: fluidity was fine but graphics were completely unacceptable.

The Predator 8, is priced at $300 made almost exclusively for the gaming market. But… it doesn’t play games!! If you make something for a niche market make sure that the thing does the job its supposed to do. Not just focus on the design. The Nvidia Shield blows the Predator 8 away, and it’s only $199.